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End of the Early Modern Age
The '''Early Modern Age' lasted from about 1453 AD until 1756 AD. In the broader geographic sweep of history, Early Modern spans the era between the European Age of Discovery, and the eve of the Seven Years' War, when India was irresistibly sucked into the worldwide conflict between British and French power. Though many parts of the world had been dramatically affected by contact with Europeans, the more advanced civilisations such as Qing China, Shogunate Japan, and Mughal India were virtually untouched by such contamination of their traditional ways. In the next century and a half, change was to come thick and fast almost everywhere, as Europe consolidated her hegemony over the world. Before the mid-18th century, demand for oriental goods such as porcelain, silk, spices and tea remained the driving force behind European imperialism. China, Japan and India largely welcome European trade and cultural interaction, although both China and Japan imposed increasing trade restrictions on the unruly merchants. Nevertheless, none took the potentially crucial step of developing a strong navy, and had no sense of how vulnerable they were to attack from the sea. The Industrial Revolution would dramatically increased European demand for Asian raw materials, and give them the technological advantage to match their aggressively expansive mood. History Early Modern China By the early-17th century, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had become enfeebled and decadent. Ming rule was partly undone by pampered emperors, rarely seen in public, who left the practical matters of running the state in the hands of favoured eunuchs, notorious for corruption, self-enrichment, and clashes with the Confusion bureaucracy. There were a series of financial crises with experiments in paper-money leading to hyperinflation, followed by an over-reliance on foreign silver that was suddenly cut-off by Japan and Spain. Natural disasters and peasant uprisings became commonplace, a clear sign throughout Chinese history of the decline of a dynasty. Pampered emperors, rarely seen in public, left the practical matters of running the state in the hands of the much-hated palace eunuchs. Peasant uprisings became commonplace, a clear sign throughout Chinese history of the decline of a dynasty. In 1644, a coalition of rebels sacked Beijing. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor (1627-44), committed suicide when the city fell, marking the official end of the dynasty. The general commanding the Ming garrison in the north decided to appeal to neighbouring Manchuria for help in recovering the imperial capital. Manchuria, the region north of Korea, had never been part of China. Although the Manchus imitated many of the more sophisticated ways of their neighbours, they were still considered barbarians by the Chinese; they were racially closer to their western neighbours, the Mongols. They defeat the rebels at the Battle of Shanhai Pass (May 1644), and entered Beijing two week later which they kept for themselves, declaring the start of a new Chinese-style dynasty. The the process of conquering the rest of China took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. The Manchu named their new dynasty the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), the second foreign imperial dynasty to rule China. Like the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) before them, the conquering Manchu found themselves in charge of a civilisation whose government they had defeated, but whose cultural power far exceeded their own. This meant that for over two centuries Chinese society under the Qing existed with two seemingly contradictory realities. On the one hand, the Qing rulers took great pains to show respect for traditional Han Chinese culture, and thus win the allegiance of high officials and cultural figures. On the other hand, the Manchu rulers were at great pains to remain distinct, enforcing strict rules of social separation between the Han and Manchu. While the Han continued in the employ of the Chinese bureaucracy, more than the highest-level offices were reserved for Manchus. They also tried to maintain a culture that reminded the Manchu of their nomadic warrior past, most obviously forcing the Han to adopt the Manchu queue hairstyle, with part of the head shaved and leaving a long pigtail. Under three emperors - Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong - who ruled for a total of 135 years, the Qing Dynasty flourished. The country’s territory expanded, spreading Chinese power and culture further than ever: west of the Great Wall as far west as Turkestan; north to Mongolia and Manchuria; Tibet was brought under Chinese protection; and Taiwan colonised. The expansion was fuelled by economic and social prosperity. The Chinese people were better-fed and healthier than ever before, with the population doubling from around 150 million to 300 million people in the 18th century. By the end of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1735-96), China was the fourth largest empire ever by area, and ruled more than one-third of the world's population. In the 18th-century, China was also among the most advanced and wealthiest economies in the world, some of it fuelled by the new global market introduced by contact with Europeans. In 1750, China and Britain were economically in a rather similar position, yet within a century, Britain’s Industrial Revolution had taken off, whereas China was at the mercy of British gunboats. It was "Western Barbarians" which eventually caused the downfall of the Qing, China's last imperial dynasty. In Chinese tradition, people from outside the empire are classed together as one group; barbarians. However, by complying with local tradition, the Jesuits disarmed the Chinese in their distrust of foreign ways. China first became known to the Europeans in detail during the Ming Dynasty. In 1583, a Jesuit missionary called Matteo Ricci (d. 1610) arrived in the Portuguese trading post on Macao. He was the first European to make a systematic study of China, learning the Chinese language, studying the Chinese classics especially Confucius, and even translating the Bible into Chinese to bring Christian truth to these very civilised infidels. Europe was greatly impressed. Chinese rationalism chimed perfectly with the ideas of the Enlightenment. The Chinese style is imitated in the Chinoiserie which becomes the fashion in European furniture and interior decoration. And the Chinese secret of porcelain was desperately sought by European potters, in a race won in 1709 in Meissen, Germany. However, the Jesuits were followed by unruly European merchants in increasing numbers. In 1686, the Qing emperor Kangxi (1661-1722), on a tour of the southern provinces, was alarmed to discover how many westerners were "Wandering at will over China". Kangxi, foreseeing trouble, imposed restrictions on Europeans entering China, and set up a trading company in Canton to regulate all European trade. In 1715, all Christian missionaries were expelled from China, after the pope officially condemned Chinese religious practices. His grandson, the Qianlong Emperor (1735-96), went further, banning all non-Russian ships from Chinese ports, and restricting all such commerce to the single port of Canton. The policy would be successful until the early 19th century, when prosperous and self-confident Europeans, masters of the oceans and eager to trade, were in an aggressively expansive mood. When the first Portuguese ship reached China in 1513, during the European Age of Discovery, it becomes clear that something had gone wrong with Chinese innovation, although pride in their great culture would make it very hard for the Chinese themselves to recognize its, or to learn from the foreigners. The Chinese had gunpowder before anyone else, but they had to learn from the Jesuits how to cast heavy cannon. Chinese sailors had long had the use of the mariner’s compass and a rich cartographical heritage, but they neither pushed across the Pacific, nor mapped it, as did later the Europeans. The Chinese made mechanical clocks six hundred years before Europe had them, yet the Jesuits brought with them timepiece far superior when they arrived in the sixteenth century. The list of unexploited intellectual triumphs could go on. Part of the explanation lies in Confucianism, which valued social stability over innovation; restraint, discipline, refinement and respect for the great masters of the past were the qualities admired by the scholar-civil servant. Another important aspect was China's remoteness from other great civilizations. Ideas flowed slowly but they did flow between India, the Islamic world, and Europe, and far easier than they did to China. Early Modern Japan The Muromachi Shogunate (1338-1573) was never as firmly in control of Japan as their predecessors, and regional warlords (daimyōs) vied with each other in seemingly interminable feuds and power struggles known as the Warring States Period. Towards the end of this period saw the arrival of the first Europeans in 1543. They found a land torn apart by warfare, ripe for conversion to Christianity; at least in the eyes of missionaries. For their part, the Japanese warlords were more interested in the worldly matter of firearms. Nearly two centuries of chaos in Japan were gradually brought to an end by a succession of three warlords, who most successfully adapted muskets to Japanese warfare. The first was Oda Nobunaga (1573-82), who starting from a relatively small power base, used his skilled and ruthless generalship to win a series of victories over rivals. By 1568, he had seized Kyoto supposedly in support of the last Ashikaga Shogun, but five years later banished him and took control into his own hands as the nominal supreme power in Japan. He now turned his attention to tightening his grip on the country, against rival warlords and also militant Buddhist sects who were now a political force. He encouraged Christianity as a counterbalance to his Buddhist enemies and to forge strong relationships with European arms merchants. Under his successors, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1582-98) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1598-1616), the reunification of Japan proceeded at a rapid pace, until the last rivals were defeated at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600). In 1603, his position as overlord of Japan was legitimised when the largely ceremonial emperor conferred on him the title of Shōgun. The Tokugawa Shogunate (1600-1867) was characterised by relative peace and stability. A rigid and ruthlessly effective form of the feudal system was introduced, which avoided the problems that had plagued European feudalism; great nobles building-up power bases in their own regions, and undermining the monarchy. In Japan, all nobles were required to spend every other year in Edo. Moreover, in alternate years their families and heirs remained in the capital, effectively becoming hostages of the Shogun. The stark reality of the situation was softened somewhat by the luxury of life in Edo, but maintaining houses in the country and the capital left many nobles indebted, further reducing their ability to rebel. In addition, the Shōgunate directly controlled ports, mines, major towns, and other strategic areas. Great lengths were taken to suppress social unrest, with harsh penalties and even execution, were decreed for even the most minor criminal offenses. Confucianism was also officially encouraged with the aim of reinforcing the idea of hierarchy and status quo. It encouraged learning and literacy, and by the mid-19th century some 30% of the population of 30 million were literate; far ahead of the Western norm at the time. As in China, the Tokugawa Shoguns eventually realised that foreign influence could be a potential danger. The early encouragement of the Jesuits, as a counterbalance to the Buddhists, was reversed. In 1614 an edict ordered all Jesuit missionaries to leave Japan. In the following decades Japanese Christians were hunted down with the thoroughness of the Inquisition, sometimes being killed with macabre ingenuity. On one occasion seventy victims were crucified upside down on a beach to be drowned by the incoming tide. All Westerners were expelled, except the Protestant Dutch, who were granted a single trading post on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbour. The Shōgunate found Protestantism less inclined to zealous missionary work than Catholicism. The Japanese may have been prepared to let the British stay also, but the Dutch showed astute commercial one-upmanship and convinced them than Britain was a Catholic country. This two century long isolationist policy in broad terms hampered Japan’s development, but at a local level it stimulated a dynamic society and rich culture. In the peace and stability merchants prospered, boosting the economy. A largely pleasure-oriented urban life thrived in Edo and Kyoto, and produced the popular Kabuki theatre, with its colour and stage effects. Other entertainments included Bunraku puppet theatre, Haiku poetry, popular novels, and Ukiyoe wood-block prints often of Geisha, who came to the fore in this period. With no major military engagements, most Samurai ended up fighting mere paper wars as Confucian bureaucrats, rather than warriors. Nevertheless, occasionally the idealism of the Bushidō ''code was still put into practice, such as the exemplary loyalty shown by the Forty-Seven Rōnin, who spent two years avenging the unfair death of their lord in 1701; after killing the man responsible, they in turn were all obliged to commit ''Seppuku. As it happened, the Western powers would bring about the demise of the Tokugawa Shogunate, only to prompt the extraordinary rise of Japan under Emperor Meiji. Early Modern India For two-and-a-half-centuries after the 1350, politics in India fragmented into several regional states, under either Muslim or Hindu dynasties. The Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526) showed no power to restore the former Islamic empire. It wasn't even the paramount power in northern India, competing with a separate sultanate in Bengal, and a Hindu coalition of Rajput rulers in Rajasthan. Only in the 16th-century was Islamic rule revived by a prince from outside, Babur of Kabu'l (1504-30), founder of the magnificent '''Mughal Empire '(1504-1857). Babur is one of history's more endearing conquerors, despite his cruelty and duplicity; generous, hardy, intelligent, courageous, and sensitive. He left a remarkable diary that vividly described his triumphs and his sorrows throughout his life. On his father’s side Babur descended from the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, and on his mother’s from Genghis Khan himself, formidable advantages and a source of inspiration to a young man schooled in adversity. In his youth, he was one among many impoverished Timurid princes, fighting one another for small fragments of the great man's empire. There can have been few monarchs who, like Babur, conquered a city of the importance of Samarkand at the age of fourteen. He was ousted almost as quickly, but his throneless times came to an end in 1504, when at the age of twenty-one he conquered Kabul (modern-day Afghanistan). With help from the powerful Persian Safavid Dynasty, he made a triumphant reentry into Samarkand in 1511, but lost it again three years later to a formidable Uzbek rival. Babur now resigned all hopes of recovering his ancestral domains, and instead sought his fortune in India. His reputation steadily grew from a series of profitable raids beyond the Khyber Pass into the Punjab. By 1525, Babur was able to assemble a 12,000-strong army, complete with artillery and matchlock rifles, probably acquired from the Safavids, who had been forced to rapidly adopt gunpowder weaponry to meet the threat of the Ottoman Turks to their west. Babur marched on the Delhi Sultanate, and its fate was decided at the Battle of Panipat (April 1526). Babur was heavily outnumbered, perhaps as much as four to one, but his tactics and weaponty won the day. He took-up a prepared defensive position, using carts to form a barricade in front of his artillery; a device pioneered by the Hussites of Bohemia a century earlier. The Sultan of Delhi order almost all his elephants and troops to attack head-on, sure his numbers would decide the day. However, these were some of the first cannons seen on the subcontinent, and sent the elephants into a frenzy. With any semblance of order lost, Babur boxed in the enemy with his cavalry, while riflemen and archers used the carts for extra elevation with devastating effect. The Sultan of Delhi was slain and his army routed. Delhi was now under Babur's control, and another impressive victory using similar tactics at the Battle of Khanwa (1527) against the Rajputs, who territories became vassals of the growing Mughal Empire. For the next three years, Babur roamed around with his army. The result was an empire which in 1530, the year of his death, stretched from Kabul to Bengal. Babur’s body, significantly, was taken as he directed to Kabul, where it was buried in his favourite garden with no roof over his tomb, in the place he had always thought of as home. The reign of Babur’s son, troubled by his own inadequacy and by a half-brothers eager to exploit the Timurid tradition of divided inheritance, showed that the security of Babur’s empire could not be taken for granted. For five years of his reign, he was driven from Delhi, but recovered his throne almost unopposed just before his death in 1555. His thirteen-year-old son '''Akbar the Great (1556-1605), inheriting just six months after the return to Delhi, would seem have little chance of holding onto India. Yet he was to build an empire that won the awed respect of Europeans, who had appeared on the west coast, and called him "the Great Mughal". Akbar reigned for almost half a century, just overlapping at each end the reign of his contemporary, Queen Elizabeth I of England, and some historians have compared their roles. He had many kingly qualities. As a boy, Akbar preferred riding, hunting, and fighting to lessons; as a consequence, uniquely among the Mughal rulers, he was almost illiterate. Yet he possessed a considerable natural intellect, a strong personality, but a willingness to listen to the arguments before taking his decisions. He was a man of culture and learning, and courage to the point of folly. In his early reign, the fragile empire was skilfully held together by the able statesman, Bairam Khan, with young king as his most attentive pupil. Among Akbar's first acts on reaching maturity was to marry a Rajput princess, who was, of course, a Hindu. To signal that his intention of ruling in a new way the two religious communities of India, Muslim and Hindu, his new wife was permitted to freely practice the rites of her own religion; an unprecedented act for a Muslim ruler. She became the mother of his heir, Jahangir, and her Rajput relatives were made members of his court. They were treated on par with his Muslim follower for the most part, with the Rajput soldiers and generals fighting for the Mughal army under Akbar; though the last Rajput Raja held out until 1583. And Akbar carried his religious policy further. In 1563, he abolished a tax levied on pilgrims to Hindu and Jain shrines. The next year, he put an end to a much more hallowed source of revenue, the Jizya (tax on non-Muslims), which the Qur'an itself stipulates shall be levied in return for Muslim protection. He also discouraged the slaughter of cows out of respect for Hindu custom, and prohibited the killing of any animals on the holy days of Jainism. Akbar even invited the Portuguese to send Christian missionaries to his court, and three Jesuits duly arrived in 1580, who were allowed to construct a church at Agra; though they were disappointed in their long-indulged hope of his conversion. At the same time, Akbar steadily extended the boundaries of his empire, rebuilding the unity of northern India. A cunning general, Akbar's normal way of life was to move around with a large army, holding court in a splendid camp laid out like a capital city but composed entirely of tents. In 1573, he conquered Gujarat, the area that dominated India’s trade with western Asia. He then turned east, subjugating Bengal in 1576. Toward the end of his reign, he embarked on a fresh round of conquests, in the north adding Kandahār (Afghanistan) in 1595 and as far south as the Godavari River by 1601. Akbar's success as an empire builder was as much a result of diplomacy as warfare. Signing a treaty with Akbar involved presenting a wife for his harem; as his empire grew, so did his harem, eventually numbering around three-hundred. And their relatives, Hindu or Muslim, usually prospered in Akbar’s service. At the same time, he showed no mercy to those who refused to submit, most notoriously in massacres at Panipat and Chittorgarh. In governing his vast empire, Akbar was less an innovator than a carefully reorganiser of the institutions he inherited. The empire was subdivided into fifteen provinces, each with a military governor for a limited term, and a separate civil administrator to supervise tax collection; thus establishing checks and balances to prevented the emergence of regional warlords. They had the primary function of providing soldiers as needed and raising the tax revenue, now assessed on an empire-wide and more flexible taxation system that varied with local circumstances; a system devised by a Hindu finance minister. The Mughals also built an extensive road network, created an empire-wide uniform currency, and improved living standards. By his death, Akbar the Great had tripled in size and wealth of the Mughal Empire, whose influence extended over the entire subcontinent in a way not seen since the time of Asoka. Estimates suggest that by 1700, the India economy was the largest in the world, larger than both Qing China and the entirety of Western Europe. Akbar was succeeded by his eldest and only surviving son, Jahangir (d. 1627). Two other sons had died of drink, and Jahangir's effectiveness as a ruler was limited by his own addiction to both alcohol and opium. But the empire was now stable enough for him to preside over it for twenty-two years without much danger of upheaval. For all his faults, though, Jahangir was a notable promoter of the arts, above all of painting. Under his keen eye the imperial studio produced work of finely detailed realism and exceptional beauty. During his son's reign, Shah Jahan (d. 1666), some of the most vivid and permanent reminders of the Mughals’ glory were constructed. In addition to the Taj Mahal (1653), the world's most famous and beautiful mausoleum, he oversaw the construction of Delhi's mighty Red Fort and converted the Agra Fort into a palace that would later become his prison. He also began the piecemeal conquest of the Deccan sultanates. Below the level of the court, the picture of Mughal India was becoming less attractive. Local officials had to raise more and more money to support not only these lavish building projects and campaigns, but the élites who were essentially parasitic on the producing economy; virtually nothing was productively invested. The rise of rural banditry is a telling symptom of the resistance these exactions provoked. Shah Jahan’s rapacious demands probably did the empire less damage than the religious enthusiasm of his son Aurangzeb. In 1658, Shah Jahan fell ill, and appointed his eldest son, Dara Shikoh, as his regent, which swiftly incurred the enmity of his three brothers. The resulting civil war ultimately became a ideological struggle between Dara championing the syncretistic Hindu-Muslim culture, and his brother Aurangzeb supporting Islamic orthodoxy. Aurangzeb defeated Dara in 1659 and had him executed; although Shah Jahan recovered from his illness, he was declared incapable of ruling and spent the rest of his life imprisoned. Aurangzeb (1658-1707) combined disastrously absolute power, distrust of his subordinates, and a narrow religiosity. That he did not enjoy a luxurious life and reduced the expenses of his court is not much of an offsetting item in the account. As a religious and political conservative, he abandoned a century of pluralism and religious tolerance, and instead endeavoured to impose strict Islamic rule on India, including prohibiting behaviour such as music, gambling, fornication, and consumption of alcohol and narcotic. While the imperial bureaucracy continued to employ a great many Hindus, conversion became more and more necessary for advancement. At the same time, Aurangzeb was obsessed with extending Mughal rule into the difficult terrain of southern India. To fund his wars, he reimposed the Jizya poll tax on non-Muslims, alienating Hindu merchants and peasants. During his reign, the empire reached its greatest extent, ruling over nearly all of the subcontinent, but this was balanced by a series of major revolts. While brutally suppressing them, Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of many Hindu temples that were accused of being centres of plots against the state, as well as executing a number of local rulers, including the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur. By his death in 1707, he was still imposing heavy taxes to fund permanent and futile wars to hold onto southern India and to suppress revolts in many parts of the empire. Moreover, Aurangzeb died without nominating an heir, and there followed a grave crisis for the Mughal dynasty, as sons again disputed the succession; in 1719 alone, four emperors successively ascended the throne. The empire almost at once began to break-up, and vast tracts of territory passed to independent regional kingdoms, some founded by provincial governors and others based around ethnic and religious groupings. Another significant blow came in 1739, when Delhi was sacked by a Persian conqueror in the classic mould of Genghis Khan or Timur. Safavid Persia (1501-1722) reached its peak under Shah Abbas (d. 1629), who oversaw a spectacular flowering of Persian culture and built a new capital at Isfahan whose beauty and luxury astounded European visitors. Although the Safavid empire continued for almost a century after his death, it was a period of political infighting and dynastic feuding. In 1722, Afghan rebels besieged and took Isfahan, slaughtering thousands and sparing only the architectural wonders. Yet the Safavids were briefly rescued from oblivion by a soldier of fortune, Nader Shah (d. 1747), who shattered the Afghans in 1729. He ruled Persia in the name of the Safavids, until he grew tired of the pretence and had himself crowned in 1736, thus ending the dynasty once and for all. History regards him as a little more than a brilliant warlord who idolized Genghis Khan and Timur, and sought to imitated their military prowess; and occasionally their cruelty. The obvious weakness of the Mughal Empire invited Nādir Shah’s descent upon the plains of northern India for plunder and spoil. In 1737, he captured Kabul, where Akbar had been brought up. Then he marched on Delhi, defeating the Mughals at the Battle of Karnal (February 1739), and taking the emperor prisoner. As Nādir rode through the conquered city, some Indian civilians threw stones at him. and a brutal sack of the city ensued, that left some 30,000 dead. The conqueror soon left Delhi laden with booty, including the famous jewelled Peacock Throne that was the seat of the Mughal emperors of India; it is said that the plunder allowed him to stop taxation in Persia for three years. Nādir Shah’s constant warring rapidly wore out the Persia, and his assassination in 1747 brought a welcome if temporary respite, soon followed by the ineffectual Qajar Dynasty (1789-1925). Meanwhile, the Persian raid paralyzed the Mughal court, and a precipitous decline set-in. Mughal "emperors" continued to rule right up until the Indian Mutiny of 1857, but they were emperors without an empire. The most significant successor states was the Maratha Empire (1674-1818) of the western Deccan, founded and consolidated by Shivaji (d. 1680) who gathered popular support by championing the Hindu cause. At its peak, the empire covered a third of the subcontinent, but expansion came to an abrupt halt in 1761 against a much more formidable foe than the Muslims; the European. Throughout the the Mughal period, Europeans had gradually established themselves as a strong presence around the coasts of India. The process had begun when the Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama arrived on the coast of modern-day Kerala at the end of the 15th-century. Within a few years his countrymen had installed themselves as aggressively armed traders. Attempts to dislodge them failed in the troubled years following Babur’s death, and during the late-16th-century the Portuguese moved around to found new posts in the Bay of Bengal. They made the running for Europeans in India for a long time. Yet the Portuguese were liable to attract the hostility of good Muslims, because they brought with them pictures of Christ, Mary and the saints, which smacked of idolatry. Protestants were to prove less irritating to religious feeling when they arrived. In 1612, the first emissary of the British East India Company arrived at Jahangir’s court at Agra; the first contact between two countries whose historical destinies were to be entwined so long and with such enormous effect for them both. The contrast at that time between the two realms is fascinating: the Mughal Empire was one of the most powerful in the world and their court one of the most sumptuous, while England was barely a great power even in Europe and crippled by debt. Jahangir was contemptuous of the gifts sent to him by King James I. Yet the future of India lay with his subjects. British trading posts were established at Surat in Gujarat in 1613, at Madras in 1639, Mumbai in 1668, and Calcutta in 1690. For the most part, the Mughals welcomed European trade, profiting from the export of cotton, indigo, silk, sugar, saltpetre (for gunpowder), and of course spices. The Europeans brought with them chillies and potatoes from the Americas, which have become an integral part of Indian cuisine. And they were strong enough to discourage overly-aggressive trading, giving the British a bloody nose in Child's War (1686–90). By 1672, the French had also established themselves at Pondicherry, an enclave they held even after the British departed; further trading posts were added at Chandernagore in 1690, and Karaikal in 1739. The stage was set for more than a century of rivalry between the British and French for control of Indian trade. Perhaps responsibility for the eventual triumph of Europeans in India lies with the Mughals, for not scotching the serpent in the egg. Strikingly, it seems they never envisaged the building of a navy, a weapon used with modest success by the Ottomans. With the decline and fragmentation of the Mughal Empire after 1707, we are into the era in which India was increasingly caught up in events not of her own making. The transformation of the British from traders to conquerors began almost by accident as an offshoot of two European wars; the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) and Seven Years' War. Early Modern Africa Much of the reason why Africa has long been overlooked as a continent were civilisation developed, is because the diverse variety of civilised development there during the Middle Ages went into sharp decline as the world transitioned into the Modern Age. One factor in this was that African civilisations with any semblance of wealth would soon attract predators, and be quickly overwhelmed by armies with artillery and muskets. Another was the disruption to long-establish overland trade that was caused by the new maritime trade. In West Africa, a long series of empires had emerged based on the lucrative trans-Saharan trade. The last of these, the Songhai Empire (1464–1591), was destroyed by the Muslim Moroccans, and with its fall no more West African trade based empire arose to take its place. Meanwhile, the Swahili city-states of the East African were similarly conquered, this time by the Portuguese; the European model was not to share Indian Ocean Trade, but to control it. The ports were either directly taken over such as Kilwa, Mombasa, Mozambique, and Malindi, or driven out of business. Neither did Africans particularly benefit from acting as middle-man for the Europeans in the African slave trade. The slave trade caused a dramatic increase in inter-tribal warfare, as Africans competed to act as the middle-man for the Europeans. Whenever Africans tried to monopolise the trade and raise prices, Europeans tended to move elsewhere. Alternatively they would become more directly involved, such as the Portuguese conquest of Angola in 1575; the first European colony on the West African coast. Contact with Europeans also had a number of other effects. Since slaves were predominantly male, this caused a gender imbalance on the continent and an increase in the practice of polygamy. Somewhat ironically, the population of Africa actually increased during the Modern Age, despite some 10 and 12 million people being transported to the Americas against their will, because Africans gained access to the Columbian Exchange; maize, yams, peanuts and other crops. Meanwhile many African elites on the West coast converted to Christianity in order to attract slave traders, similar to the way people converted to Islam to attack Muslim merchants during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, even as late as the 1870s, European states still directly controlled only 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coast. This would dramatic change during the era of New Imperialism. Category:Historical Periods